Robert L. Perkins

Book Review: III. Historical-Theological Studies: Merleau-Ponty and Marxism: From Terror to ReformMerleau-Ponty and Marxism: From Terror to Reform, by CooperBarry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. 204 pp.

Professor Coopers book is an excellent review and interpretation of Maruice Merleau-Pontys political and social philosophy. This overview should be of great significance to those attempting to understand the history of the French mind since the 30s, be they graduate students or missionaries to French-speaking countries. Merleau-Ponty is in many ways a better index than Jean-Paul Sartre, his countryman, collaborator in the resistance, and sometime friend. Merleau-Ponty had a more flexible mind than did Sartre; that is, he was less dogmatic. Also, he is a better political commentator than was Sartre, and as such could confront questions Sartre could not even ask.

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reviewer s j u d g m e n t the major criticism of this excellent and useful volume. Does Tulls choice of Clarke, Rauschenbusch, and King as the shapers of Baptist thought since the era of Campbell and Graves do justice to the more conservative and the moderate theological patterns within Baptist life? Should Tull have included Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Augustus Hopkins S t rong , E d g a r Young Mullins, Walter Thomas Conner, Carl F . H. Henry, or Billy Graham? Should he also have included Baptists outside the Anglo-American sphere such as Johann Gerhard Oncken of Germany, Pablo Besson of Argentina, or Gunnar Westin of Sweden? Whether or not he has intended to do so, Tull has by his selection of Clarke, Rauschenbusch, and King left the implication that theological l iberal ism, the social gospel, and the civil rights struggle are the only major trends in Baptist thought during the twentieth century.